Monday, 8 October 2007

Theme Parties, Event Managers

Those are normal words you can use these days when you consider Kiddie Birthday Parties. Apparently. Its fine, I can live with it. Thankfully, on Sunday was a theme party, not involving an event manager. Being a-social and all, we rarely get to go to parties of this kind, but this time, it was unavoidable. Meaning the hosts live next door so we had to be invited, of course.

The theme was Pirates (shudder!). I suppose its fun for a kid. There were swords in golden and purple, with scabbards and everything. A treasure chest, gold & silver coin chocolates, a pinata with chocolates, little chocolates all over the house as treasure, a pirate ship cake with a pink wafer sail, yadayadayada.Oh yeah, these swell eye-patches too, for all the kids.

I, being of course, totally clueless about such matters, was not of much help to the host-mamma or host-elder-sis-in-charge-of-games. I hung around, looking less bored than I was, mopped up some apple juice some kid spilled, and tried very hard to convince a particularly annoyingly screechy kid to lower the volume a tad. And when the boys charged at me with their swords saying they would attack and kill me, I told them I would fight back with a hug. They would poke my (fat) tummy with the sword, & I would smother them with a hug. They were quite cute though, despite such weird behaviour from what looked suspiciously like an aunty, they talked to me again. I stuck to my theme of hugs for the entire evening. I was surely not going to indulge in sword-fights with kids, that would go against my everything.

My husband supported me very well by disappearing to the gym for most of the time of the party; returning all sweaty and scaring the kids in the hallway (there was a relay race for pirate treasure going on at that time; my daughter and I were sitting on a parapet wall & watching & wincing), and then speaking on the phone for a continuous hour. Then he asks me (as if I have sole rights on such things), would you do a pirate theme party for our child? So I say, no, of course not. How about a Princess, he says. No, of course not, and he knows it too. He shakes his head, and says, oh the poor child, will curse her parents so much. Well, let her.

What are pirates & princesses anyway? What do they even mean? Do the kids understand what the words even mean? The only princess I know is that one in Jean Sasson's books. Should I talk to my three year old about that, now? I did ask her what a Pirate was. She confidently told me that he is a person who looks for treasure. The treasure is gold, she said. What is all this, really? Why don't I have a theme birthday party on Human Rights or Global Warming?

I have lots of battles to fight with mine child in the future. Already today I was under fire because I dressed her in (what I thought was) these really cute little pair of green shorts & a black t-shirt; and Simmie (school friend age approx. four) was in a pink skirt with twinkly things on & a white t-shirt that had ties here and there. Much upset at her amma was my child. And this is a constant tussle these days. If I say skirt, she says pants, if I say pants, she says frocks... And I cannot get myself, with my own hands, to make her wear shiny twinkly fussy lacy things to school!!

the painful part is that i hate all this dressing up business so very very much. and i cant express this hatred in such strong terms to the monster cause that will surely ensure that she loves it because i hate it.

csm- eagerly await not just your ideas in black and white but your words of wisdom to her... i think the time is ripe now, she understands & is willing to listen.

choxbox- i dredged out some long ago memory of yours and told her that she is beautiful because of the goodness of her heart and not because of anything she wears (you had said that a long time ago in some context, dont remember any more details!). :-)

Aha, so the brat gets a fashion sense, eh!.. tell moi niece that she looks cute in anything.. As for the brats here, the senior has severe schoolhatitis and the junior believes he descended to earth only to feed, crap and sleep.. what to do.. san.. btw you have been blogrolled in moi non read blog along with the great long nosed one..

kbpm: yeah i think i drilled in that her smiling and happy face makes her look pretty, no matter what she wears. i think i drew a simple face with a smile and a sad one with lots of fancy stuff and asked which she thought was more fun etc.. years later i say this - it has worked, much to my own surprise.mkqyawn

5. defending choices. ask her to defend her pick/choice. you should be able to for yourself too. (not sure about this)

6. choose battles. let some minor irritants pass. they will auto heal and then will not return.

7. imposing will. sometimes it becomes more an ego thing. how can she not listen to me!! dont impose will (or 'will not'). just let them do something which you would shudder at (say, painting her room, tring tring). doesnt really matter much.